Advanced HL model viewer Created 10 years ago2014-09-28 16:46:31 UTC by Badaluyah

Hi fellow modders!
I am Badaluyah, a Half-Life modder like you.
Few years ago as Windows Vista came out, I, ike everyone else, was troubled with the old HL model viewer.
For years I was writing my own viewer that would overcome this error and many others too.
I know it is a big and productive Half-Life community, I decided to post it here as well.
This is the list of currently available facilities in my program:

• does almost everything that Jed's viewer does.
• it fixes controller bugs
• it fixes texture bugs and allows render modes
• it partially supports half-life 2 and portal 2 models
• it allows large 8192 textures
• it allows import and export of bmp, gif, png and tga
• it allows merging animations
• it allows exporting of models and frames to .smd and .obj
• supports loading from .pak and .gcf archives
• allows viewing of blendings
• can export list of animations to C++ file
• plug-in system is planned.

It is a little buggy now, as I'm losing interest in this work, but please let me know if you want me to complete it and post it on this forum.
Thank you.

That all sounds incredibly useful, and personally I'd love to see a functioning build!

I can honestly say I haven't experienced any issues with HLMV... but then I'm running Win7

omg plz yes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! post this also @ svencoop forumS =) and gamebanana

Yes, please post it, it sounds very interesting! If you're losing interest in the project, is there any chance of you releasing the source code under a GPL or MIT/BSD license? I work on a Hammer alternative called Sledge and I want to expand its model-viewing capabilities, and I eventually want to create a standalone model viewer of my own. I'd be super interested in seeing your code!

Penguinboy expanding his empire.

Today, a model viewer.

Tomorrow, European Central Bank.

I'm running Win7 too Urby, but about 3/4 of the time I run HLMV it maxes out my CPU and the process doesn't end when I close the window, I have to kill it in the task manager.

Also Badaluyah, that sounds pretty amazing, and extremely useful.

TJB, same here under 2008 R2 exactly!

Well, sounds too nice to be true Anyway, looking forward to seeing it.

I, too, have the closing problem with HLMV. :/

Can't say I've ever had trouble with it.
Only thing that really bothers me is you can't select more than one item at once. A real pain if you're trying to take a bunch of things out of a pak, say.

Actually I have had the closing issue now that you mention it.

BTW, what language is it written in?

Sorry for delay. Man who translated my text went far away. And I go through troubles here.
Answers:

xawari:
It is written in microsoft .NET.

Penguinboy:
I dont know yet about the opening source. It is very big and has errors. Ill think about it.
I thought I sell it but that is bad Idea

I promised screenshot:

had to re-install windows XP, because work on 8.1 was impossible

I will make download next time.

This is amazing, Badaluyah! More please!

@TJB: I also have that problem of the maxed out CPU while running JHLMV for 6/7 times.
The only thing I can do to fix this is to run a fast scan with a software (Advanced System Care for example) or restart the computer, and the problem fixes. :/

Not a big problem tho.

It is written in microsoft .NET.

So it starts like 3 minutes, eats 90% CPU and requires 350MB of runtime? Thanks, but no thanks. :-/

There might be something wrong with your PC, xawari. All .NET apps start in <1 second on my computer and idle at 0% CPU. The runtime is included with new Windows versions, and for older Windows versions it's a 50mb download. I'd recommend doing a reinstall of the framework if you're having trouble with it, or perhaps do a memtest to see if you have some faulty RAM installed.

I can easily run .NET apps on my shit old netbook xawari.

Pengy is right. I recommend a full scan with Advanced System Care 7 Pro, this might help.

All .NET apps start in <1 second on my computer and idle at 0% CPU.

Try disabling .net prefetcher on startup.

The runtime is included with new Windows versions

new Windows versions

I'm just fine with my good old 2003, and without any frameworks. Sorry As a programmer, I just prefer fast, reliable and small native code. .NET is a heresy
Sorry for flaming!

PS: Badaluyah, why is that model upside down?

The only difference between .NET and something like Qt is that with Qt, every application needs to ship with 30mb of runtime DLLs. With .NET, it's a once-off 50mb download (you only need to download the latest framework in most cases, it is backwards compatible).

As a programmer as well, I prefer code that is fast, reliable, AND supports first-class functional programming, reflection, dynamic typing, on-the-fly code generation, is easy to read and write, and integrates seamlessly with OS-level services. .NET has all of this - try writing something like Reactive Extensions or Linq-to-SQL in C++ - you will find that it's impossible.

I'm not going to debate the issue, though. With .NET going open source, you should expect to see more applications created with it

Is there still a way to make native GUI's with C++ ? Without frameworks and crap.

2rufee:
Lots of ways:
WinAPI (nowdays considered "hardcore")
MFC (fast, but not very flexible, requires lots of std::hands)
wxWidgets (unlike QT uses underlying OS's GUI controls and drawing methods - like MFC, but crossplatform and much better)

QT, FoxTK, GTK, etc. AFAIK use their own controls.

Yeah, wxWidgets is really the only good option if you want cross-platform support without buying into a full framework like .NET/Java/Qt/GTK+. It has bindings to a lot of languages as well. I haven't used it before but I've heard that it's quite nice.